Maths

Our rationale: 

“Mathematics is a creative and highly inter-connected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems.” (DfE, 2013)

At Hampton Vale, mathematics is fundamental to everyday life and understanding our world. It enables the development of pupils’ natural ability to think logically, reason and solve real life problems. To achieve this, we have ensured our curriculum strategically accommodates time to deepen understanding as well as solidifying breadth of knowledge. 

We have created clear lesson structures to ensure knowledge is learnt, embedded, retrieved and applied in order to develop a secure understanding of the mathematical concepts. Retrieval is a key aspect of every maths lesson to check that learning is secure, increasing the retrieval strength when needing to access it and securing knowledge to the long-term memory. We recognise the importance of early mathematics providing the foundation of learning; our detailed progressive calculation policy outlines the depths of understanding pupils are required to know, exploring number in a multitude of ways in order to compute successfully. Being efficient, accurate and flexible with knowledge is when pupils become fluent. In addition to this, reasoning is interwoven and opportunities to problem solve are included within lessons to encourage adaptability through application. This encourages pupils to internally scan, select and apply these grasped concepts to unfamiliar situations. 

This pursuit for pupils to acquire a “deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding” (NCTEM, 2021) is referred to as Mastery. 

Achieving Mastery is something that requires practice and application over time. This enables a person to be able to represent it in multiple ways, communicate related ideas, reason and think mathematically so that they can independently apply it within and across new problems.

Our approach highlights the importance of this and our aim is for all children to have the chance to develop mastery. Our desire is for all children to become skilled, fluent mathematicians and have a deep, secure and adaptable understanding of key mathematical concepts.